How Nestlé Brought 2,000+ Brands and 186 Markets Into One View of Creative Execution
Written by
Elissa Ha
September 12, 2022
5
min read
Nestlé was working to reinvent more than 50 years of marketing practice to become digital and audience first.
Across more than 2,000 brands, 186 markets, and 15,000 marketers, the challenge was not simply defining what good digital creative should look like, but to see whether that strategy survived execution across thousands of assets, local markets, and agency partners.
In 2019, Arush Kochhar, then E-Business Transformation Lead, and Dienda Andrianie, Head of Media, confronted this blind spot at Nestlé Indonesia. Their teams had digital and media KPIs they wanted to improve, but no reliable way to see whether their own teams and agency partners were applying Nestlé’s creative standards consistently.
CreativeX gave Nestlé one view of every digital asset in scope, adherence to nine shared creative elements, and agency execution against those elements. An MMM study then connected that execution signal to ROAS.
Teams could now see where execution differed from expectations, establish a baseline, and identify where intervention was needed.
“When we saw how poorly our assets were performing (something we had always assumed, but now we had the raw data), we knew the value of CreativeX. Now we could set targets, track almost in real-time and verify if our agency partners had the right approach to asset creation.”
Nestlé Indonesia joined the CreativeX pilot because the team saw the potential to turn its assumptions into evidence. Nine creative elements were mapped into one consistent metric, giving the team a practical way to compare execution across assets and track progress over time.
Creative Quality Score provided one signal within this broader view. It helped Nestlé establish a baseline and understand where standards were not being applied consistently, but the value came from what the team could see and do with that information.
Nestlé Indonesia began with a CQS of 30%. By using the signal to align teams, set targets, and change how creative was produced, the market increased its score to 92%, a 207% improvement.
The pilot’s success helped pave the way for CreativeX to be implemented across more than 2,000 brands and 186 markets.
Nestlé Indonesia’s pilot became a model for other markets because the team did more than measure creative execution. It used the resulting visibility to change processes, align teams and partners, and decide where action was needed.
Together, these steps show how Nestlé Indonesia turned a local pilot into an operating model that could be repeated across brands and markets.
Making creative execution visible only creates value if teams can act on what they see.
Nestlé Indonesia introduced new processes, reporting, and guidelines based on the patterns identified through CreativeX. Arush shared that “we set up new processes, new reporting, new guidelines and cascaded these changes to our agency partners.
”When CreativeX was first introduced, and whenever a new agency partner joined, Nestlé explained the platform, clarified the relevant creative standards, and showed how the evidence would be used.
Dienda’s media team ensured that brand teams and agencies remained aware of the guidelines and set clear internal and external KPIs around their adoption.
Nestlé also brought its creative standards into the agency briefing process earlier. This gave teams and partners a shared understanding of expectations before assets were produced, rather than identifying problems only after creative had entered the market.
Consistent reporting helped Nestlé turn asset-level data into a view that teams across the organization could understand.
“Once you have champions that speak the same language…that’s how you achieve scale,” shares Arush.
Instead of asking every stakeholder to interpret numerous creative and channel metrics, Nestlé could use one consistent execution signal to show where progress was being made and where attention was still required.
“In digital sometimes there’s too much data, too many metrics, people don’t know which ones to look at...so the beauty of CreativeX is that you explain it once or twice and then everyone gets it…and they don’t need to be experts to understand,” said Arush.
For Dienda, consistent reporting created greater visibility into both the work being done and the remaining areas for improvement. It also allowed markets to learn from one another and created healthy competition around stronger creative execution.
The same evidence will not mean the same thing to every stakeholder. Nestlé’s teams translated what they were seeing into the priorities that mattered to each audience.
“In every business that’s how you crack it, what’s the problem, how’s CreativeX helping, and don’t say Creative Quality Score… but what do you say instead?” shared Arush.
For agency partners, the value was having previously difficult-to-measure expectations made clear and measurable.
“We know that we’ve asked you for certain metrics that are hard or impossible to measure, so we’re enabling you with this tool in order to do it…we’re here to make your lives easier,” shared Arush.
This created a shared evidence base for Nestlé and its partners. Both sides could see where execution differed from expectations and focus on how to improve it together.
Read more → How CreativeX Helped Nestlé Align Agencies, Markets, and Leaders Around Its Creative Standards
“We were able to do it at the country level and the brand level, and that scalability is key.”
Arush later oversaw CreativeX’s growth for KitKat, one of Nestlé’s largest global brands. When he joined the team, KitKat averaged a 30% CQS. Within eight months, it had reached 80%.
“We’ve proved that CreativeX works at a country level, and that’s cool because [Indonesia] is a big market, but KitKat is a massive international brand. We were able to do it at the country level and the brand level, and that scalability is key,” he shares.
This showed that the approach could work across different parts of Nestlé’s creative system. Teams could establish a baseline, understand where execution varied, and use the same evidence to guide improvements at both market and brand level.
Nestlé also connected its creative execution data with business outcome data. An MMM study found a 74% increase in ROAS for ads with a high CQS.The importance of this finding went beyond the score itself. Bringing execution and outcome signals together allowed Nestlé to examine how the way creative was produced related to the effectiveness of its media investment.
Arush and Dienda continued expanding how they used creative data. Their next priorities included connecting execution with Quality Spend Rate, brand lift studies, and wider brand performance.
The creative data platform unlocks transformational opportunities for every organization because it enables scale, alignment, and reality for the whole team. Arush Kochhar saw this firsthand, sharing his experiences:
Nestlé’s story is not simply one of improving adherence to creative standards. Once activity across brands, markets, and partners sat inside a common infrastructure, Nestlé could see how its strategy was being executed, understand where execution varied, and intervene at enterprise scale.
Ready to bring your global creative execution into one view? → Sign up for a product demo today.
Acknowledgements:
Arush Kochhar, Global Digital Confectionary Lead, Nestlé
Dienda Andrianie, Head of Media, Nestlé Indonesia
